feminist blogs

This is a penis home. I am not a penis home.

Megachurch pastor Mark Driscoll, who was once a rock star in the evangelical world, has recently fallen from grace under accusations of plagiarism, abuse of power, and “spiritual bullying” with his ideological machismo. Much of the criticism stems from his anonymous rantings on a church message board in 2001 decrying how America has become a “pussified nation.”

Here are some of his musings on men, women, and penises. 

The first thing to know about your penis is, that despite the way it may see, it is not your penis. Ultimately, God created you and it is his penis. You are simply borrowing it for a while.

While His penis is on loan you must admit that it is sort of just hanging out there very lonely as if it needed a home, sort of like a man wondering the streets looking for a house to live in. Knowing that His penis would need a home, God created a woman to be your wife and when you marry her and look down you will notice that your wife is shaped differently than you and makes a very nice home.

Therefore, if you are single you must remember that your penis is homeless and needs a home. But, though you may believe your hand is shaped like a home, it is not. And, though women other than your wife may look like a home, to rest there would be breaking into another man’s home. And, if you look at a man it is quite obvious that what a homeless man does not need is another man without a home.

As Libby Anne at Love, Joy, Feminism writes, this is a rather, um, explicit way of articulating a fairly common idea in evangelical Christianity: Despite assurances that men and women are equal before God, it’s men who were the primary creation, and women were created to satisfy men — to be men’s “helpers” or “homes.” Gotta love that homophobic conclusion and, of course, the way that all women who aren’t your wife are considered other men’s literal property, which squares nicely with evangelical ideas about women’s purity. As Anne explains, “Every woman is some man’s future wife, and that man owns her body even before they meet.”

Driscoll goes on to say that a husband should learn to make his “home” happy and a wife should rejoice at seeing her husband’s penis “rise to greet her” (brb,  throwing up), but as Ann notes, “This sad attempt at mutuality fails when the one party is described as a penis home.”

Maya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing.

A group of women gather for a Voodoo ceremony. Image Credit

Last Friday marked the 9th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the natural disaster that killed almost 2,000 people and displaced 400,000 people, most of them low-income African-Americans and people of color. This tragedy left a hole in the city of New Orleans and exposed the legacy of our country’s at times sickening racism, hurting diverse and rich communities that we rarely hear about in mainstream media.

One of those was the Voodoo or Vodou community. Before Hurricane Katrina hit, there were about 2,500 practitioners in New Orleans. Today, there are closer to 350. 

In Newsweek, Stacey Anderson writes about the history of the smaller — but thriving — community of Voodoo practitioners today.

“Despite its reputation for vengeful hexes and black magic, Haitian voodoo is a peaceful and generally optimistic religion. It encourages strong family and community bonds and regular offerings to the thousands of spirits who aid all aspects of life, from business deals to romances.

[...]

Both [Haitian and New Orleans] voodoo are monotheistic (the highest god is Bondyè, the “good lord”), are mostly oral- instead of text-based and celebrate thousands of cosmic and natural spirits (akin to Catholicism’s saints). Participants are, and historically have been, mostly lower-income. Creoles and local slaves in the 18th century followed aspects of voodoo; so did slaves in pre-Civil War New Orleans during their Sunday dances at Congo Square. Voodoo influence grew stronger during the Haitian Revolution of 1791, when thousands of Africans and Haitians immigrated to the city. The earliest roots of voodoo date back approximately 6,000 years to Benin, West Africa, and an estimated 60 million people practice it worldwide.”

Anderson goes on to detail that the disaster has forced the two strains of Voodoo — Haitian Vodou and New Orleans Voodoo — to support each other through the rebuilding process. Now, there are more inter-community gatherings, even as old rivalries and debates continue.

We can only hope that this resilient community manages to rebuild itself in the face of environmental racism, income inequality, and a legacy of colonization. Voodoo — and other Afro-descendent religions throughout the Americas — has dealt with more than its fair share of racism, stigma, and violence. I find this particularly sad, not just because religions like Voodoo, Santería, Candomblé and Umbanda are living examples of resistance against colonialism and white supremacy, but also because they are well known for being particularly inclusive of women. Afro-Latinx religions generally value women as priestesses alongside men (or even above men), and many see sexuality as a human trait to be celebrated.

Not only that, but Afro-Latinx religious deities (known as Orishas or Loa in Haitian Vodou) include a host of powerful and complex female figures. Meet Oshun, the Orisha of love and the river, to whom the most recent Feministing Jamz video was dedicated. Or Yemanjá, the Orisha of the ocean and motherhood, who got a quiet shout-out in Beyoncé’s song “Blue.”

For many women around the world, Voodoo or Candomblé or Santería provide communities where their skin color is considered beautiful and ancient, and where their gender is empowering, not limiting. It’s an opportunity to transcend the oppressions that still affect so many, and connect with a force more powerful than bigotry and greed.

*Spelling of the Orixás’/Orishas’ names varies between country and language.

Juliana just moved her Orixá dolls from a box back onto her desk. Happy to have Iemanjá keeping her company while she works.

When Hurricane Katrina broke the levees of New Orleans and flooded 85% of the city, 100,000 people were left homeless. Disproportionately, these were the poor and black residents of New Orleans. This same population faced more hurdles to returning than their wealthier and whiter counterparts thanks to the effects of poverty, but also deliberate efforts to reduce the black population of the city.

With them went many of the practitioners of voodoo, a faith with its origins in the merging of West African belief systems and Catholicism.  At Newsweek, Stacey Anderson writes that locals claim that the voodoo community was 2,500 to 3,000 people strong before Katrina, but after that number was reduced to around 300.

The result has been a bridging of different voodoo traditions and communities. Prior to the storm, celebrations and ceremonies were race segregated and those who adhered to Haitian- and New Orleans-style voodoo kept their distance.  After the storm, with their numbers decimated, they could no longer sustain the in-groups and out-groups they once had.  Voodoo practitioners forged bonds across prior divides.

Voodoo Priestess Sallie Ann Glassman performs a ceremony at Bayou St. John (photo by Alfonso Bresciani):

Voodoo Priestess Miriam Chamani performs a ceremony at the Voodoo Spiritual Temple:

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Last month I posted data showing that, of all the things that might disqualify someone for public office, being an atheist is tops.  I wrote: “Prejudice against those who say there’s no god is stronger than ageism, homophobia, and sexism.” On average, Americans would rather vote for someone who admitted to smoking pot or had an extramarital affair.

We just don’t like atheists.

But who is “we”?

A survey by the Pew Research Center asked Americans of varying religious affiliations how they felt about each other.  atheists were most disliked by Protestants, especially White evangelicals and Black Protestants (somewhat less so White Mainline Protestants).  Atheists quite liked themselves, and agnostics thought were they were okay. Among other religiously affiliated groups, Jews gave atheists the highest rating.

For what it’s worth, atheists feel warmish toward Jews in return, preferring them to everyone except Buddhists, and they dislike Evangelical Christians almost as much as the Christians dislike them.

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(Image via Yahoo News)

No, this isn’t a headline from The Onion. How does the Mormon Church respond to a woman critical of the Church’s treatment of women? By ex-communicating her. I guess they want to show and not tell.

Kate Kelly has been a Mormon all of her life. She served as a missionary in Spain when she was 21. She was married in the Salt Lake Temple. She has been a proud Mormon and, up until very recently, a regular church-goer. But on Monday, she found out that the Mormon Church, also known as the Church of Latter-Day Saints, ex-communicated her for apostasy, the repeated and public advocacy of positions that oppose church teachings.

The symbolism couldn’t be any better (or worse); Kelly was excommunicated in absentia by an all male panel for questioning the all male nature of the Church’s leadership. Specifically, Kelly advocated for allowing women to be ordained as priests. According to the Mormon Church, only men can become priests because all of Jesus’s apostles were men. That’s men. Not boys. Yet the Mormon Church has no problem ordaining boys as young as 12. Why do they follow Jesus’s example when it comes to gender but not age?

It’s easy for me to ask that question. I have nothing to lose. I’m not Mormon. But questioning the Church proved extremely difficult for Kelly, a human rights lawyer from Virginia who now lives in Utah. Kelly started the organization Ordain Women, which “aspires to create a space for Mormons to articulate issues of gender inequality they may be hesitant to raise alone. As a group we intend to put ourselves in the public eye and call attention to the need for the ordination of Mormon women to the priesthood.” She also organized demonstrations at the Church’s conferences at Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

Kelly was warned to take down the website for Ordain Women. But she refused, as she explained in a letter to the church:

I will not take down the website ordainwomen.org. I will not stop speaking out publicly on the issue of gender inequality in the church… I cannot repent of telling the truth, speaking what is in my heart and asking questions that burn in my soul.

(Image via the Atlantic)

I’m an atheist but have always admired and respected people who use religion to fight for social justice, ranging from Dorothy Day to Martin Luther King Jr. to Oscar Romero to Desmond Tutu. And, of course, I admire respect and agree with Kelly. But I have to admit that part of me couldn’t help thinking, “Of course the Mormon Church is sexist. It’s also racist. (It used to not let Black men become priests either, until God told the Church president that Black priests were actually fine. And totally coincidentally, that communication took place right after the IRS threatened to revoke the Church’s non-profit status if it continued to discriminate.) All Churches are sexist. In fact all official institutions of organized religion are sexist. Why be naive and try to change it?” Huffpost Live host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani seemed to read my mind when she said to Kelly, “You were born into [The Mormon Church]… But you have the right to leave. So why not just leave it?”

After hearing Kelly’s response, I respected and admired her even more:

If an institution needs to be improved, if there’s ways that it can be more inclusive, I’m just the type of person who likes to invest and dig in and help make that institution a better place, whether that’s the United States of America, where I live, whether that’s my church, that I love. I disagree with the U.S. government on some of their policies but that doesn’t mean that I move to France… And I’m the same way with the church.

Kelly crystallized exactly what I’ve thought and felt but have been unable to express as eloquently so often. On more occasions than I can remember, someone has responded to my critique of some U.S. policy or historical intervention by saying, “If you hate it so much, why don’t you just leave.”

We all have, or should have, the right to leave a church or a country. And there are times when an institution or nation makes people’s lives so unbearable that leaving them behind is the only escape. But others can and choose to fight to make change from within. And Kelly is urging others to do exactly that, despite her ex-communication:

The decision to force me outside my congregation and community is exceptionally painful. Today is a tragic day for my family and me as we process the many ways this will impact us, both in this life and in the eternities. I love the gospel and the courage of its people. Don’t leave. Stay, and make things better.

Sadly, The Mormon Church made it very clear that it remains officially and undeniably  sexist as an official institution.  Luckily, there are countless Mormons who support Kelly and her beliefs, as evidenced by the over 1,000 letters written to her bishop on her behalf, and the over 50 vigils held in 17 countries around the word, and a rich tradition and thriving culture of Mormon Feminism. Hopefully, The Church hierarchy will adapt.

 Katie Halper is a writer, comedian and film-maker.

A new survey ranks the qualities that Americans dislike in a potential leader, discovering that they still give a strong side-eye to atheists.

Prejudice against those who say there’s no god is stronger than ageism, homophobia, and sexism.  People would also rather vote for people with admitted moral failings (in the eyes of some), such as those who’ve admitted to an extra-marital affair or the use of weed, than those who claim a perfect record guided by some other force than god.

On the plus side for atheists and their allies, the percent of people who say that they are disinclined to vote for an atheist for president has declined from 63% in 2007 to the 53% we see today.

Via Citings and Sightings.

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For all of the misogyny inherent to the Catholic church (and evangelical and conservative Christianity in general), newbie Pope Francis has gotten a lot of attention for his (relatively) more progressive views and policies in his year of service. He has encouraged women to breastfeed in church. He has washed the feet of women, prisoners, and people with disabilities — rather than the traditional priests — in Holy Thursday observances. He has said he doesn’t judge gay priests (hardly a heartfelt embrace, sure, but a definite step forward from the position of popes before him). He has been lauded as “remarkable” by the HRC and named The Advocate‘s 2013 Person of the Year. Of the whole year, y’all.

And yet.

On Monday, Il Papa celebrated Mass with a group of 15 lengthily married couples to celebrate their marital milestones. His homily focused on the “three pillars” of Christian marriage: fidelity, perseverance, and fruitfulness. The “fruitfulness” part, he acknowledged, can be a bit of a challenge to infertile couples, but new babies are important to growing the church. What Jesus really hates, though, he said, are those married couples who selfishly withhold from the church those warm bodies to baptize:

“These marriages, in which the spouses do not want children, in which the spouses want to remain without fertility. This culture of well-being from ten years ago convinced us: ‘It’s better not to have children! It’s better! You can go explore the world, go on holiday, you can have a villa in the countryside, you can be care-free… it might be better — more comfortable — to have a dog, two cats, and the love goes to the two cats and the dog. Is this true or is it not? Have you seen it? Then, in the end this marriage comes to old age in solitude, with the bitterness of loneliness. It is not fruitful, it does not do what Jesus does with his Church: He makes His Church fruitful.”

Of course, as a no-longer-Catholic, I’m not personally obliged to provide His Holiness with fruit from my womb. And that’s a good thing; neither The Boy nor I plans to have kids, and it was something we discussed early in the relationship to make sure there were no surprises or disappointments later on. And the fact is, we do sometimes explore the world and go on holiday (with and without the pups), and it’s great. We don’t have a villa in the countryside or live completely carefree, which would be awesome, but we definitely get to have a lie-in on Saturdays (after the dogs have been let out to pee) and drop money on IMAX tickets because we don’t have to worry about sending anyone to college.

As for the loving going to the pets… the love goes to each other. Don’t get me wrong — we love the pets. There’s no way I would be able to put up with Skip’s room-clearing flatulence if there wasn’t love there. But they’re not “fur-babies” (ew), they’re not substitutes for human children, and one of the benefits of a childfree life is that The Boy and I get to focus on each other. And when old age comes, it won’t be spent in solitude. (And frankly, creating new human beings so you won’t be lonely and you’ll have someone to take care of you when you’re old strikes me as pretty damn selfish.) God willing, old age will come with each other’s company, and since we’re hoping to both go at the same time in a spectacular skydiving/fireworks-related accident, we’ll be together to the end. If you’re only willing to limit the concept of “fruitfulness” to human reproduction, then yeah, ours isn’t a very godly existence, but that’s a pretty major limitation.

Moreover, though, for all the Pope’s praise of marital fruitfulness, both the Catholic church in general and he specifically have come out explicitly against policies and practices that support precisely that. The church opposes abortion, birth control, IVF, and other methods that would allow couples to be fruitful when they choose to be so and are best equipped to raise healthy families. He opposes same-sex marriage, depriving those couples of the marital bliss he champions in his homily, and he opposes allowing same-sex couples to adopt, depriving them of the opportunity to celebrate God’s fruitfulness.

And while Pope Francis gave it the glancingest of brushings-over in his homily, the “fruitfulness” narrative can, in fact, be a major blow to infertile couples who desperately want to have kids but are instead stuck in a childless relationship that will, Il Papa says, make them bitter and lonely.

It almost seems like a trivial complaint, since by its nature, the Catholic church is never going to be a full-on liberal, progressive, or (gah) feminist institution. And among the church’s offenses, “criticized couples who have pets instead of babies to a handful of married Italians” is toward the more innocuous end of the list. (Try “radical feminist” nuns and feminist “chauvinism with skirts”, for a start.)

But seriously. I’m used to being a ball-busting, man-hating, hairy-legged, baby-killing, slutbag, God-cursed feminist. But now my pets are evidence of my unholiness? Don’t listen to him, Dave; after all, “God” spelled backward is “dog.”

Currently circling the social media globe with the force of impassioned clicktivism is the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Sometimes it’s accompanied by photos of African girls (not always Nigerian), sometimes by photos of Nigerian mothers gathered in protest, sometimes by links to news stories, sometimes by nothing at all. It offers solidarity and raises awareness — but it isn’t without issue.

Jill spoke with MSNBC’s The Cycle yesterday about the hazards of hashtag activism. She points out that two years ago, #Kony2012 circled the Internet to the sound of hundreds of millions of impassioned tweets… and has now faded into memory, having had little lasting impact. #BringBackOurGirls brings attention to the current tragedy without the context of any of Boko Haram’s atrocities for years before now, or of the regional ongoing and historical circumstances in and around Nigeria that have led up to those atrocities. It’s good that people care enough to click “retweet.” But we need to understand what we are and aren’t accomplishing.

What #BringBackOurGirls won’t do

Spur direct individual action. When you tweeted that picture of your boobs in the name of “breast cancer awareness,” there was a chance, however remote, however really remote, that someone would see the photo and actually think, “You know what? I am overdue for a breast self-exam.” That’s not likely to happen here, unless you have Twitter followers who have the resources to fly down to Nigeria with their favorite bloodhound and help search, or hand out water to protesters in Abuja. Basically, the one action twitterers can take when they see #BringBackOurGirls is to… also tweet #BringBackOurGirls.

Give you a place in the tragedy. When the woman handing out flyers by the hot dog cart downtown says that this tragedy happened to all of us, that’s not sympathy or empathy — that’s missing the point. #BringBackOurGirls isn’t about making Westerners feel bad about what’s happening or good about taking action. When we say, “Bring back our girls,” we’re saying, “We support this cause.” When masses of mothers marching on the Nigerian capital say, “Bring back our girls,” they’re saying, “Our girls have been kidnapped and are being sold into slavery, so go out there and bring them back.” It’s different. Sometimes you’re the rockstar, and sometimes you’re the mic; our place is to listen and give support where we’re needed.

Spread understanding. The abduction of hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls is about education. And fundamentalist religion. And global politics. And national politics. And history. And corruption. And oil. And terrorism. And sex trafficking. And violence against girls. And global, archetypical misogyny. None of those things fit into 140 characters on their own, much less as a complex and ongoing crisis. To change those things, they need to be attacked head-on, with every tool we have at our disposal, in their own context. And they do need to be attacked. But trying to make #BringBackOurGirls about any single cause, no matter how noble that cause is, dilutes the message and weakens its ability to do the one thing it’s actually capable of doing.

What #BringBackOurGirls can do

Keep the eyes of the world on rescue efforts — or lack thereof. Here’s the deal: Initial efforts to find the kidnapped Nigerian girls were made more or less entirely by their parents, who hiked into the forest armed with bows and arrows and rocks and sometimes nothing. The day after the attack, the Nigerian Defense Ministry released a statement saying that soldiers had rescued all but eight of the girls. This wasn’t true. About 50 girls managed to escape and find their way back as a group, on their own, but locals say that the promised soldiers never showed up.

Three weeks later, a social media campaign has drawn international attention to the kidnappings, the lack of coverage by international traditional media, and particularly the way the Nigerian government has been alternately bungling and lying about rescue efforts. #BringBackOurGirls wasn’t invented by caring Westerners; the hashtag originated with Nigerian lawyer Ibrahim Abdullah, tweeting the words of Nigeria’s former minister of education Oby Ezekwesili. And families and friends have been marching and campaigning online to bring attention from the world and concrete efforts from the government from day one.

It’s in the past week or so that the hashtag has found footing in a broader audience, demanding that the international community pay attention. Eyes are on the Nigerian government and President Goodluck Jonathan, who finally spoke publicly about the abductions for the first time on Sunday. Eyes are also on organizations like the U.N. and governments like the U.S., which has promised to send advisors to help with the search efforts. It would be great if all these parties were moved to action simply because rescuing these girls is the right thing to do. Failing that, though, they’ll do it because now everyone in the world will notice if they don’t — for as long as everyone in the world pays enough attention to notice.

So tweet, and continue tweeting as necessary, to show solidarity and to demand that level of accountability without which people in power can’t bring themselves to fulfill their responsibilities. It is both the least and the most we can do.

Fred Phelps, Sr., despicable human being and founder of the notorious hate group Westboro Baptist Church, has died.

Family members have said that Phelps, who one estranged son says has been excommunicated from the church, will have no funeral to picket.

“How could we get evidence for this?” I often ask students. And the answer, almost always is, “Do a survey.” The word survey has magical power; anything designated by that name wears a cloak of infallibility.

“Survey just means asking a bunch of people a bunch of questions,” I’ll say. “Whether it has any value depends on how good the bunch of people is and how good the questions are.”  My hope is that a few examples of bad sampling and bad questions will demystify.

For example, Variety:

Here’s the lede:

Despite its Biblical inspiration, Paramount’s upcoming “Noah” may face some rough seas with religious audiences, according to a new survey by Faith Driven Consumers.

The data to confirm that idea:

The religious organization found in a survey that 98% of its supporters were not “satisfied” with Hollywood’s take on religious stories such as “Noah,” which focuses on Biblical figure Noah.

The sample:

Faith Driven Consumers surveyed its supporters over several days and based the results on a collected 5,000+ responses.

And (I’m saving the best till last) here’s the crucial survey question:

As a Faith Driven Consumer, are you satisfied with a Biblically themed movie — designed to appeal to you — which replaces the Bible’s core message with one created by Hollywood?

As if the part about “replacing the Bible’s core message” weren’t enough, the item reminds the respondent of her or his identity as a Faith Driven Consumer. It does make you wonder about that 2% who either were fine with the Hollywood* message or didn’t know.

You can’t really fault Faith Driven Consumer too much for this shoddy “research.” They’re not in business to find the sociological facts. What’s appalling is that Variety accepts it at face value and without comment.

Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog.

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